When the newly formed Pan American Airways formally takes to the skies on Nov. 12 at Brownsville, Texas, there will be a San Diego connection.

As reported here last week, Pan Am is rising Phoenix-like one more time from the ashes of bankruptcy and liquidation, but it is a far cry from the storied commercial airline that circled the world for eight decades.

Pan American Airways will be a cargo service, consisting of two leased Boeing 727’s, reaching south from Brownsville to Mexico and Latin America.

Pan American President Robert Hedrick called on Wednesday and spoke at length about the new airline’s plans, dreams and connections.

First and foremost, this is not the Pan Am your father knew and flew. Hedrick wants that to be clear. Pan American Airways is a name registered in Delaware and Texas and has no connection to the original airline, which went down in bankruptcy in 1991.

There is one connection: the cargo business is housed in the newly refurbished Pan American Airways Building built in 1931 and located at 495 Amelia Earhart Dr. at the Brownsville Airport. If anything, Hedrick has a great appreciation for the history. After acquiring the building, it seemed only natural to name the airline Pan American.

Amelia Earhart was there for the original dedication of the building, he said, and Charles Lindbergh flew the first mail plane from there to Latin America and back.

Hedrick would very much like to carry on the spirit of the original Pan Am and TWA and the other great airlines who made history circling the globe but for now his airline will be all about cargo.

Like many an entrepreneur before him, Hedrick saw a need and figured out a way to fill it.

The need was to ship $200 million worth of swimming pool products all over the world. The company that owns Pan Am designs water management systems, purification systems and high-end resort and theme park water attractions all over the world.

In the course of conducting their own work, says Hedrick, they have become “the traffic manager for major pool industry suppliers.”

Hedrick spent most of the 1990’s in San Diego’s Rancho Bernardo community, working for a spa manufacturer, Caldera, and a water management company based in Oceanside. He was recruited to Texas in 1998 by World-Wide Consolidated Logistics, the company that founded Pan American Airways.

Some of his investors, says Hedrick, are San Diego Yacht Club members brought aboard by connections made in his San Diego days.

As the company’s global connections grew, “it only made sense to use our own airplanes,” said Hedrick. And when he looked at a map and saw no south of the border connections outside of Miami and Los Angeles he decided the Texas gateway was a natural.

Hedrick’s company has been working for four years “under the radar” to bring Pan Am to life. Their headquarters is now an official federal Transportation Safety Administration certified cargo screening facility. A lot of their plans will be announced at the dedication ceremony on Nov. 12 in Brownsville. Cargo flights should begin right after the first of the year.

The company planes will move aquatics industry supplies and other cargo south and return with grain, fresh-cut flowers and whatever products Latin America needs moved north. As cargo demands build, the airline will grow in frequency of flights and destinations, said Hedrick.

Hedrick wants to see Brownsville become the cargo gateway to all of South America and Africa.

And some day, he is certain, Pan Am will carry passengers.

As a young boy he flew around the world on Pan Am with his parents. He appreciates the nostalgia and glamor that surround the name. “But I’m not going to fly to Amsterdam, just because that’s the history of the name,” says Hedrick, more than once.

If anything, the first passenger service will be for Monterrey, Mexico, residents who have summer places on Padre Island in Texas, says Hedrick. Then, possibly, Cancun. With both the World Cup and Olympics coming to Brazil in this decade, Hedrick sees opportunity for cargo and passengers.

But for now, it is all about cargo and the frugal, cautious nurturing of the north-south supply chain. Hedrick won’t even repaint his two 727’s. “Cargo doesn’t care what the plane looks like,” he said with a chuckle. “And besides, it is $750,000 just to repaint an airplane.”